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I love how that article says that Ford, Fisher and Hamill are too old to play their characters. Um, clearly, they haven't taken into account TRON: Legacy or even The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The technology is there, oh yes. There are absolutely no reasons they couldn't give us the Thrawn trilogy. And I guarantee it'd be better than anything they supposedly come up with "Originally."

So I guess speculation about who the characters are and what the subject/setting will be in these new movies shall dominate geek/nerd conversations until 2015. I'd say it'll all be about casting except that we don't know who should be cast. That said, casting will certainly attract attention, potentially much like it did in 1997-99. Wow, talk about the years of dreaming.

Sure, it would be great to see one of the original Star Wars actors make an appearance in the new movies, but it also would be a self-referential nod that would take the audience out of the film.

I find this sentiment dumb. Look, sure, I get it, they're old now and audiences want young beautiful people with multi-range sex appeal more than they want to be reminded what the young people from 35 years ago look like now. But old characters can be in the flipping movie without distracting us with their wrinkles. Now confidence that Lucas's treatment uses them well? Heh, yeah, I ain't saying that.

As long as Disney stays hands off like they have with Marvel Studios and Kathleen Kennedy is in charge I guess it's not the end of the world. There is a lot of potential. I just hope they do right by the fans and give us another trilogy to be proud of and bring some of the excitement back to Star Wars. I'ld really like them to go in a darker direction than the prequels.

Tuesday’s news that George Lucas is giving the keys to the Star Wars universe to The Walt Disney Company in a $4.05 billion mega-deal surprised fans around the world, including some famous filmmakers who grew up on the franchise. It even caught a key figure in that universe — Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill — by surprise. Reached by EW, Hamill — who currently does voice work on no fewer than four animated series and will co-star in the upcoming crime thriller Sushi Girl — shared a few thoughts on where Star Wars and its fabled creator go from here now that Lucas is handing over the reins (and the light sabers and blasters and all the rest) to new custodians and the next generation of filmmakers.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What did you make of the big news yesterday?

MARK HAMILL: Oh my gosh, what a shock that was! I had no idea that George was going to sell to Disney until I read it online like everybody else. He did tell us last summer about wanting to go on and do [Episodes] VII, VIII, and IX, and that [newly appointed Lucasfilm president] Kathleen Kennedy would be doing them. He seems to be in a really good place. He’s really happy. And that’s nice because I know that when we were making the movies, he was not a jolly guy on set. [Laughs] I always felt badly for him because he agonizes over details, and I’m sure after imagining it in his head for so many years, to see it realized — he’d look up and just hang his head and groan. Harrison [Ford], Carrie [Fisher], and I were always trying to cheer him up and joke him out of his doom and gloom. I missed his call yesterday, but I spoke to him maybe three weeks ago. But until we know more, it’s hard to make any comment other than congratulations to George.

So you met with George this past summer and he told you about his plans to make another trilogy?

Yeah, last August, he asked Carrie and I to have lunch with him and we did. I thought he was going to talk about either his retirement or the Star Wars TV series that I’ve heard about — which I don’t think we were going to be involved in anyway, because that takes place between the prequels and the ones we were in and, if Luke were in them, he’d be anywhere from a toddler to a teenager so they’d get an age-appropriate actor — or the 3-D releases. So when he said, “We decided we’re going to do Episodes VII, VIII, and IX,” I was just gobsmacked. “What? Are you nuts?!” [Laughs] I can see both sides of it. Because in a way, there was a beginning, a middle, and an end and we all lived happily ever after and that’s the way it should be — and it’s great that people have fond memories, if they do have fond memories. But on the other hand, there’s this ravenous desire on the part of the true believers to have more and more and more material. It’s one of those things: people either just don’t care for it or are passionate about it. I guess that defines what cult movies are all about. We’ll see. I’m anxious to know what’s going on, but the main story [yesterday] was the sale to Disney. I have mixed feelings about that, but they haven’t done badly by Marvel and the Muppets and Pixar. It’s one of those big decisions that at first seems unusual but then the more you look at it, the more it makes sense.

When you had lunch with George, did he get into any details with you about where the story would go in the next three films, or whether you would have a part in them?

Well, no, he was just talking about writers and the fact that he wouldn’t be directing. I guess he wanted us to know before everybody else knew. He said, “Now you can’t tell anybody!” [Laughs] Even now I’m nervous about saying anything. I just don’t know!

Umm....I wonder why Lucas wanted lunch with Carrie and Mark? I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall.

Fox has the distribution rights (I believe through 2020 if I'm not mistaken). Lucasfilm owns the movies, and Disney now owns Lucasfilm. So while Fox would certainly make money off of a proper Blu-Ray/DVD release of the UOT, so would Lucasfilm (aka Disney).

When the (formerly) Complete Saga was released on Blu-Ray last year, it's not like all of that money went only to 20th Century Fox with none of it going to Lucasfilm. Lucasfilm still got a good chunk of that pie. I don't know the exact break down, but there's no way that's staying only in Fox's pocket.

- - - Updated - - -

Originally Posted by Krueger

Umm....I wonder why Lucas wanted lunch with Carrie and Mark? I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall.

I'm not sure. Some are speculating that it would be to have them in the new films, but I don't know how well that would work. I could maybe see Mark Hamill reprising his role as Luke, but he would still likely have to hit the gym to some degree. He wouldn't have to be totally in shape, but he'd have to lose a bit of weight to make it believable.

Carrie Fischer is such a mess these days that I just couldn't see her reprising her role as Leia without it just being awful and sad.

If anyone is interested in her bizarreness, I suggest checking this out if you have a chance:

It's a sitcom that aired on Fox for 2 seasons in the early 90s called Get A Life. The complete series was just recently released on DVD. It has a solid cult following and there are a lot of extras on it.

I think most or all of the episodes have a standard commentary by series producer David Mirkin, but one rather bizarre and (IMO) disturbingly hilarious episode called "Spewey and Me" has a hidden extra commentary (activated by clicking on a picture of the Spewey alien on the DVD menu) for some reason has David Mirkin and Carrie Fisher discussing the episode. I have no idea why she's on there she had no involvement with the show to my knowledge. I suppose because it's an episode that involves an alien and she was in Star Wars? At any rate, the commentary is probably more bizarre than the episode itself, which is no easy accomplishment! While I can understand people not wanting to buy this set just for the commentary if you have no other interest in the series, itself, if you can get it on netflix or borrow it from someone who has it, I recommend checking it out just for how surreal it is.

Fox has the distribution rights (I believe through 2020 if I'm not mistaken). Lucasfilm owns the movies, and Disney now owns Lucasfilm. So while Fox would certainly make money off of a proper Blu-Ray/DVD release of the UOT, so would Lucasfilm (aka Disney).

When the (formerly) Complete Saga was released on Blu-Ray last year, it's not like all of that money went only to 20th Century Fox with none of it going to Lucasfilm. Lucasfilm still got a good chunk of that pie. I don't know the exact break down, but there's no way that's staying only in Fox's pocket.

Your right about all the movies EXCEPT the original. That could be a huge problem. Disney will have to make a seperate deal with Fox for that movie. Any future "Complete" sets could be in jeopardy.

Carrie Fischer is such a mess these days that I just couldn't see her reprising her role as Leia without it just being awful and sad.

Carrie has completely cleaned up her act recently. She's even got back into pretty good shape. And yeah, whereas I wouldn’t call Hamill really fat and out of shape, I do think he would have to hit the gym. But, you know, its Hollywood. People can look anyway you want them to look in a movie.

I think out of all the OT characters, the three that have the highest likelihood of returning are Luke and the Droids. In fact, I am almost positive Artoo and Threepio will be in the new trilogy. But I also think Leia has quite a good chance of appearing, too.

Interesting! I don't have a ton invensted in Star Wars, so anything that gets some more movies is cool by me. The prequels weren't amazing, but I enjoyed them and they don't induce vomiting like they seem to with Star Wars fans.

I'm also cool with Disney - I know they own a lot of stuff, but eh...whatever. They make some quality stuff and I inexplicably love Disney World, so I know they're good for it if they work on it. I mean saying "Disney" means a lot of things anyway. It's not talking about one person; it's tons and tons of people who are all going to do things differently. If "Disney" does something wrong or "Disney" does something right...well, we just do not know who we are really talking about. Who was at the head of the right or wrong Disney project? "Disney" didn't technically do Avengers, they just backed it and own it. All the people involved with Avengers made it amazing. So I don't really see this merger as a good or bad thing until SOMETHING happens with it. We have no idea who is directing these new Star Wars films, who is involved, etc etc. Disney doesn't mean much when so many people are involved. It could always be good or bad no matter the company (even companies with bad track records can pop out good things if they get the right people involved).

"Since you got here by not thinking, it seems reasonable to expect that, in order to get out, you must start thinking." ~ Tock, the Watchdog

Alexx has a blog?! Come on in and check out Toys and Tomfoolery! You won't regret it...until the next morning.

Carrie has completely cleaned up her act recently. She's even got back into pretty good shape. And yeah, whereas I wouldn’t call Hamill really fat and out of shape, I do think he would have to hit the gym. But, you know, its Hollywood. People can look anyway you want them to look in a movie.

I didn't realize Carrie was in bad shape, but I thought when she turned appeared on Smallville briefly that they were giving her the most unflattering lighting and make up. If she's doing better either way then I am glad to hear it.

RE Hamill, he's hard to recognize now. I had no idea this was him at first. (no, not the blond girl)

I won't begrudge him getting older, but I think he should adopt a beard and Jedi Master robes like Obi Wan had. I doubt very much Sir Alec was in superior shape when he played his role, those long elder's robes cover a lot.

I won't begrudge him getting older, but I think he should adopt a beard and Jedi Master robes like Obi Wan had. I doubt very much Sir Alec was in superior shape when he played his role, those long elder's robes cover a lot.

To be fair, a beard does actually suit him. He had one a few years ago.

The only thing about this that will be potentially weird is having new Star Wars movies released with a Disney logo coming up instead of 20th Century Fox. That's going to be hard to get used to!

That was one of my initial thoughts as well.

Originally Posted by Dynamo of Eternia

I wonder what this means for the Star Wars Holiday Special!

I didn’t even think about that. Wow. If Disney has the rights to everything Star Wars then they could potentially approve of releasing the Holiday Special. I would love some figures based on the Holiday Special. When Hasbro released that Holiday Special version of Boba Fett I got my hopes up for more.

Originally Posted by Optimus Prime

I love how that article says that Ford, Fisher and Hamill are too old to play their characters. Um, clearly, they haven't taken into account TRON: Legacy or even The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The technology is there, oh yes. There are absolutely no reasons they couldn't give us the Thrawn trilogy. And I guarantee it'd be better than anything they supposedly come up with "Originally."

I completely agree. When I first saw the new Tron, I immediately thought we have the technology to make new Star Wars movies starring Luke, Han, Leia, and Lando how we remember them. But Lucas always said no new trilogy. Now that it’s happening, I really hope they go the Tron route and create digital versions of the actors only a few years older than ROTJ. Lucas was always for pushing the boundaries of digital technology so I do see this as a possibility. Unfortunately, it appears that the Thrawn trilogy will not be the basis for the movies. Though we can only hope that that is just a diversion.

"There's only one Master of the Universe and it's He-Man." - Stephen Colbert

"The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing." - Blaise Pascal

Good. If there is one thing I do not want, it is making movies off someone's unofficial books.

Most of the novels suck anyways. The ones with clone Emperor and Jacen Solo, Jedi God, just are truly awful.

This news with a new story is good to hear, but I still think it needs to be built off of what came before if any Star Wars fan from yesterday is going to be in with it. And, why can't Harrison, Mark and Carrie play a part in the new films?! Old age didn't stop Harrison Ford from being Indiana Jones again (although that movie was bad) it was good to see the real Indy again on screen.

And, if nothing else, if the new films have to be set generations ahead in time, let C-3PO and R2-D2 co-star in them. Why the hell not?!

Disney did make Something Wicked this Way Comes- it didn't measure up to Bradbury's book but it was dark. Long ago, before the mid eighties Disney could make non-kiddie movies.

Sunny. Yesterday my life was filled with rain. Sunny. You smiled at me and really eased the pain. Now the dark days are done and the bright days are here. My Sunny one shines so sincere. Sunny one so true. I love you. - Bobby Hebb

As long as Disney stays hands off like they have with Marvel Studios and Kathleen Kennedy is in charge I guess it's not the end of the world. There is a lot of potential. I just hope they do right by the fans and give us another trilogy to be proud of and bring some of the excitement back to Star Wars. I'ld really like them to go in a darker direction than the prequels.

The more I think about it, the more I am getting excited about the potential for all of this.

Even before they were made, the prequels were already going to be an uphill battle since many people were already having specific expectations about what the backstory would be like based on things that are talked about in the original trilogy. Then of course George Lucas's execution just made things a lot worse...

Questionable choices were made. For example, showing Obi Wan as a Padawan at all (it would have made more sense and would have been more of a parallel to the original trilogy if we was already a full fledged Jedi from the start and if Anakin had been about the same age as Luke in episode IV, with Obi Wan essentially taking on the Qui Gon role), and the fact that Obi Wan is being trained by someone other than Yoda. Then (continuing with this example) having some kind of 6-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon type of explanation as to how this doesn't contradict what is stated in the original trilogy (i.e. we see Yoda training younglings in Episode II, and Obi Wan was once a youngling, therefore that's the half-assed connection).

Then of course there was the bad dialogue, and many poor performances that largely fall on Lucas's lack of ability in being an "actor's director". We get a lot of performances that are either emotionless or primarily overly fixated on one emotion.... like Hayden Christiansen as Anakin in Eps II and III being obnoxious and angry pretty much from the get go. We get no character development, he's just a jag from the start of things. We don't even see him transition from being the happy-go-lucky slave boy in Ep I to the "man" he is in Ep II. And in Ep IV we hear Obi Wan speak of how Anakin was a "good friend", but he doesn't seem like much of a good friend at all from how he's portrayed. The whole thing was a mess overall form beginning to end with the PT. Yes, there are some good moments, and Episode III is the highlight of that trilogy, but even that film has a lot of faults.

The point being is that the combo of the uphill battle against people's expectations and Lucas's bad decisions really didn't help anything there.

BUT NOW.... now we have a lot of potential. Now they can actually get someone who can write dialogue and someone who can direct it (it can be the same person, but doesn't have to be), and actually make some good movies. And since these are sequels to the original trilogy, and not a back story that's meant to fill in the blanks of already existing knowledge, it's open ended. There are many different directions they can go in with this and not have it contradict anything that came before. With the exceptions of EU fans who really want these based on existing EU stories, most of the viewing audience (which is MUCH bigger than the audience for those EU stories) have no specific expectations as to where this has to go. As long as it's a good, entertaining, and well executed story, and they don't contradict anything from the previous films (like inaccurately referencing events from the prior movies), the sky is the limit. And I think even EU fans could enjoy it if they can just separate their love of the EU from their expectations for these films. Despite those stories already existing in some form, that's still a different level of expectations than what people had for the prequels since in that case most expectation were based on things said in the OT.

Sure, there is potential for them to screw this up. It's not guaranteed that these will be good films. But if it were actually Lucas fully writing, directing, and completely controlling this thing, I'd already be bracing myself for the worst possible outcome. Now there's at least a decent chance that something good will come out of this.

Originally Posted by MegaGearMax

Should Boba Fett come back?

No, they should leave him dead IMO.

For one thing I've always felt he's rather overrated. I don't hate him, and he is a cool looking character. But really he never did anything special in Episodes V or VI that really warranted his popularity. In 'Empire' he's basically just following Vader around, and has little involvement with actually capturing Han Solo.... Vader does pretty much all of the work there. Vader just basically hands him Solo. The one time he actually attempts to really do anything in "Return of the Jedi", he ends up at the bottom of the sarlac pit.

But more so than my opinion of the character himself is how badly Lucas managed to screw things up with him. In the process of apparently trying to respond to the popularity of the character by including his origins in the prequels and having it tie into the origin of the clones, it lead to a chain reaction that screwed everything up....

Part of what made Boba Fett so cool was that he was mysterious and we didn't know what he looks like. But then in the prequels we see him as a kid, which right off the bat completely ruins that illusion. And we already know how he will look as an adult since he is a clone of Jango and all of the other clones look like him. So mystery destroyed. But it doesn't end there. He proceeded to make additional changed to the original trilogy by redubbing Boba Fett's voice with the voice of actor who plays Jango and all of the clones. So this background character, who (as I illustrated earlier) actually does very little in the OT, is largely overhauled with this voice over since the few times he talks is as close as he usually gets to actually doing something. And this is the kind of change that tends to upset hardcore fans, yet it's the hardcore fans that Lucas was apparently trying to please with the inclusion of Boba and Jango in the PT since most of the general movie going public probably didn't put that much focus on Boba Fett or give him a second thought.

So now the problem with including him in the new films is that if he talks, they will most likely use the Jango actor again. It will remind people of this change from the OT (and make it a bit more difficult to choose to watch the films in order and watch the unaltered versions of IV-VI as part of it), and just bring back that issue.

If they do include him in the new films, I hope they can just have him not talk at all.

I’m actually much more excited for the ST than I ever was about the PT. I think the main reason is because with the PT you pretty much knew the bare basics of what was going to happen and where it was going to lead. In short, you knew what to expect. But the ST is a complete mystery and it always has been. I truly have no idea of what to expect, and I think all the fans are pretty much in the same boat. There has always been so much mystery surrounding the ST.

God…..it hasn’t actually sunk in yet. We’re actually talking about Episodes 7, 8 and 9. I just can’t believe it. I really can’t. I've been waiting for this week for over twenty years.

I love how that article says that Ford, Fisher and Hamill are too old to play their characters. Um, clearly, they haven't taken into account TRON: Legacy or even The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. The technology is there, oh yes. There are absolutely no reasons they couldn't give us the Thrawn trilogy. And I guarantee it'd be better than anything they supposedly come up with "Originally."

I have no idea who this Thrawn guy is, but if he is from someone's fanfiction and not Lucas (and seeing as how he is not mentioned in any of the 6 movies, I am guessing he is fanfiction), I don't want the movies to have him at all. I want the movies to be made using original characters made just for the movies, not fanfiction characters made by some random people in their parents basement who have no idea on how to write a story without stealing someone else's universe.

Oh yeah, and unless the movie is going to feature Leia the Hutt, Carrie Fisher does NOT need to come back.

Can someone PM me the US number for Matty? I want to talk to someone who might has a clue of what is going on.